The 7-Day Back Pain Cure

213 Pages·2010·2.49 MB·English

The 7-Day
Back Pain Cure

The 7-Day
Back Pain Cure

How Thousands of People Got Relief
Without Doctors, Drugs, or Surgery

JESSE CANNONE

Innovation Press

San Francisco

The information in this book is provided for informational
purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.
The author and publisher make no legal claims, express or implied, and
the material is not intended to replace the services of a physician.
The author, publisher, and/or copyright holder assume no
responsibility for the loss or damage caused, or allegedly caused,
directly or indirectly by the use of information contained in this book.
The author and publisher specifically disclaim any liability incurred
from the use or application of the contents of this book.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Throughout this book trademarked names are referenced. Rather
than putting a trademark symbol in every occurrence of a trademarked
name, we state that we are using the names in an editorial fashion only
and to the benefit of the trademark owner with no intention of
infringement of the trademark.

Copyright © 2009 Jesse Cannone
All Rights Reserved

Published by Innovation Press, 182 Howard Street, Suite #185, San
Francisco, CA 94105

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-9764624-8-4

For those who suffer back pain but no longer need to,
and for my wonderful wife and children.

CONTENTS

PREFACE.........................................................................................I

PART I: THE HIDDEN CAUSES OF BACK PAIN..... 1

1) THE SEVEN BACK-PAIN MISTAKES ..............................4

2) PAIN IS ONLY A SYMPTOM ........................................12

3) THE THREE HIDDEN CAUSES OF ALL BACK PAIN......20

4) THE BODY: THE PHYSICAL CAUSES OF PAIN .............26

5) THE MIND: HOW EMOTIONS CAUSE

PHYSICAL PAIN ........................................................46

6) THE DIET: HOW DIETARY IMBALANCES

CAUSE PAIN.............................................................58

7) HOW THE BODY, MIND, AND DIET INTERACT .........72

PART II: SOLUTIONS FOR A PAIN FREE LIFE .. 78

8) WHY MOST BACK PAIN TREATMENTS FAIL...............80

9) THE SOLUTION FOR A PAIN-FREE LIFE......................94

10) LIFESTYLE CHANGES THAT HELP ELIMINATE PAIN.104

11) MUSCLE-BALANCE THERAPY ..................................110

12) TRIGGER-POINT THERAPY .....................................116

13) INVERSION THERAPY..............................................128

14) BALANCE YOUR EMOTIONAL STATE OF MIND........138

15) BALANCE YOUR NUTRITION...................................146

PART III: PAIN RELIEF ACTION PLANS........154

16) GETTING STARTED: SEVEN-DAY ACTION PLANS ....156

17) SUMMARY OF TREATMENT OPTIONS......................162

18) LOWER BACK PAIN.................................................170

19) UPPER-BACK AND NECK PAIN ................................172

20) HERNIATED DISC...................................................174

21) SCIATICA................................................................178

22) SCOLIOSIS ..............................................................180

23) SPINAL STENOSIS....................................................184

24) SACROILIAC JOINT DYSFUNCTION..........................188

25) OTHER CONDITIONS .............................................190

26) YOUR PAIN-FREE LIFE ............................................192

27) RESOURCES ............................................................194

Preface

Every back-pain sufferer has a story. I’m no exception.
Mine involves an attractive woman, a marathon, a surgeon, a
chiropractor, and a remarkable and entirely unexpected
solution to back pain that I popularized called Muscle-
Balance Therapy™.
As publisher of the Less Pain, More Life e-mail newsletter
(www.losethebackpain.com), I’m often asked by many of my
600,000 readers worldwide how I became one of the leading
experts on using nonmedical approaches to resolving
stubborn, recurring back pain.
Here’s what is, I hope, my interesting, but somewhat
embarrassing, story.
Several years ago, I met a very attractive woman at the gym
where I worked as a personal trainer. As every guy can tell
you, sometimes we do stupid things to impress a girl,
especially the woman of our dreams. For me, this was one of
those times.
I asked Maria out on a date and held my breath, awaiting
her answer. Much to my relief, she smiled and said she was
interested.
Yes!
I gave myself mental high fives while pretending, of course,
to be a cool customer. Maria asked if I wanted to go running
with her.
Running? Oh, yeah, definitely. I love to run.
But Maria wasn’t just any runner. Maria enjoyed
marathons, all 26-plus miles of them. She wondered if I
wanted to join her on one of her training workouts.

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iii The 7-Day Back Pain Cure

I smiled and agreed. Maria smiled back, and then left. It
was official. We had a date.
I felt terrific, except for one small problem. I wasn’t
actually a runner. But I couldn’t admit that to Maria. I had
my fragile male ego to consider! True, I was a personal trainer
and a bodybuilder, but I was more into lifting weights than
running. I’d never really run more than a mile or two. Still, I
figured I could keep up—or rather, I was going to make darn
sure I could.
Thankfully, my first run with Maria was great. We hit it
off and I handled the four-mile jaunt without a problem.
Since I kept up so well, we scheduled another run—this time,
for eight miles. Our budding romance bloomed and my
running shoes got a nice workout.
Then came our third run. Since I’d managed eight miles,
Maria decided to take me for 12. It wasn’t easy, but I did
finish. After all, my fragile male ego had to finish, right?
Tongue hanging out, I succeeded, and thought everything
would be fine.
Maria and I then went to the local grocery store. We were
having a great conversation when suddenly my left knee
buckled and I fell to the floor. When I tried to get up, I fell
back down again. How embarrassing. Here I was, a 22-year-
old bodybuilder, lying on the ground in pain, unable to walk,
and failing miserably to impress this attractive woman.
Several weeks went by, but my knee didn’t get any better.
Assuming I’d injured it, I visited multiple doctors,
chiropractors, and orthopedic surgeons. My X-rays showed
healthy bones. My MRI showed normal soft tissues. What
was going on?
Even after multiple cortisone shots and tons of painkillers,
the pain was still there. The orthopedic surgeon suggested
surgery to “clean up” some of the debris in the fluid of the
joint—even though other people with similar levels of debris
experienced no pain.

Preface
iv

I’d tried everything and still couldn’t walk. Desperate, I
scheduled the surgery.
Meanwhile, as part of an effort to expand my skills as a
personal trainer, I was attending a seminar on fitness
rehabilitation—a topic that now was even more relevant to
my life. One of the presenters was a knee expert. After his
talk, I spoke with him about my situation.
He examined me, observing how I stood and how I
walked. When he finished, he looked at me and said, “You
don’t have a knee problem at all.”
What? Obviously, this comment surprised me. But since
the surgery was only a few days away, I asked him to
continue.
“The muscles on the left and right sides of your body are
not in balance,” he said. “One side is much tighter than the
other and it’s shifting most of your body weight to the left.
That’s why your left knee is bothering you. It’s carrying most
of your weight.”
Because of this imbalance, he explained, I wasn’t really
walking with both legs, but actually just sort of hopping on
one.
Hmmm…this might explain a lot.
Of course, I’d never heard of such a thing as muscles being
out of balance. But it was what he said next that changed my
life.
“Here, let me show you a stretch you can use to even out
the difference in muscle flexibility between the left and right
sides of your body. Try it.”
I did what he suggested and within a few minutes felt a
little better. I did that same stretch a few times every day for
the next few days. Much to my surprise, my pain was 80
percent gone within three days and 100 percent gone within
seven days.
Needless to say, I canceled my surgery!

v
The 7-Day Back Pain Cure

As if this wasn’t surprising enough, within a short period
of time, two more of my other physical problems fixed
themselves—scoliosis and back pain.
When I was an elementary-school student, I had been
given a physical a few days before school started. I was
diagnosed with a mild case of scoliosis—a slightly abnormal
curvature of the spine. Rather than running straight up and
down, my spine had a bit of an “S” curve to it—with one part
bowing slightly to the right and the other slightly to the left.
Most likely this contributed to the second problem I had later
in life—back pain.
When I became a bodybuilder, I began to develop
problems with my mid-back—the part between my shoulder
blades. It always bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out how
to get rid of it. But now an unusual thing happened. When I
did the stretches to rebalance the muscles that were causing
the pain in my knee, I unintentionally eliminated my back
pain, too.
In hindsight, I realized I never really had a knee problem, a
back problem, or scoliosis. What I had was a muscle
imbalance problem. One side of my body was tighter and less
flexible than the other. This uneven tension pulled my spinal
column to one side, causing what appeared to be scoliosis.
This same tension compressed some of the nerves in my spine
and in my mid-back region, causing my back pain. It also
shifted my hips to favor one side of my body so that most of
my body weight was borne by my left leg, and of course, my
left knee.
When I ran the 12 miles, which was pretty ambitious in
itself, I didn’t really run 12 miles so much as hop 12 miles on
one leg. Of course, after my initial collapse, when I should
have given my knee a chance to rest, my muscles were still out
of balance. Without realizing it, I kept putting all my weight
on the bad knee just by walking through my daily life. It’s
amazing my knee held up as long as it did!

Preface
vi

To make matters worse, the imbalanced muscles that were
pulling unevenly on my bad knee caused the joint to operate
out of alignment. It’s like a car that has one tire half-filled
with air. The whole car starts dragging to one side and all the
parts wear unevenly until some part of the car breaks.
By stretching and doing rebalancing exercises, I was able to
restore the balance in my muscles and body frame, eliminate
my pain quickly, and go on to live pain free. I became
fascinated with how such a simple solution as stretching and
doing muscle-balancing exercises could be so effective. Why
weren’t my many doctors aware of this approach?
I began telling my friends and family about what had
happened to me. They wanted to know how they could stop
their back pain like I had. Despite my desire to help them, I
couldn’t point to any doctors, physical therapists, clinics,
chiropractors, books, videos, or audiotapes that talked about
this commonsense explanation of what causes back pain and
how to get rid of it.
The more I shared my story, the more people wanted to
learn about the solution I’d found. I felt angry and frustrated
that this information wasn’t being taught in medical schools
or offered as an option ahead of drugs, shots, surgery, and
other therapies that didn’t take this imbalanced-body
phenomenon into account.
I considered the possibility of trying to teach this form of
self-treatment myself. But I’m not a medical doctor,
orthopedic surgeon, chiropractor, or physical therapist
(though I was getting close, as my personal-training practice
had started to lean toward clients with back pain and
injuries).
Really, who was going to take me seriously?
So, I did nothing and waited for the medical and
chiropractic communities to catch up. I waited and waited
and waited. Years went by, but nothing changed. My friends,

vii The 7-Day Back Pain Cure

family, and colleagues continued to get well-intentioned—but
often incorrect—advice from people in positions of authority.
Finally, unable to continue watching people suffer
needlessly, I got fed up. I decided to forget my insecurities
about not being a medical doctor and try to help as many
other back-pain sufferers as I could—by teaching a solution I
call Muscle-Balance Therapy.
Since that day, I’ve trained more than 50,000 people to
treat themselves through my video training, self-diagnosis,
and self-treatment kit, along with my Less Pain, More Life e-
mail newsletter, all of which can be found at
www.losethebackpain.com.
This book is my most recent effort to prevent back-pain
sufferers like you from going through often unnecessary
surgeries, injections, and drugs. While unbalanced muscles
aren’t the only cause of back pain (the two other causes—
related to diet and mental stress—also are covered in this
book), they are the most common cause.
In these pages, I’ll show you how to determine the
underlying—and almost always hidden—causes of your back
pain. Then I’ll show you how to use that knowledge to get rid
of most, if not all, of your pain, typically within seven days.
Of course, this estimate is just an average. Your case may
be different. I’ve had clients who solved back-pain problems
they’d suffered with for 15 years within two days (definitely a
best-case scenario).
Others took two or three weeks to get rid of 70 percent of
their pain—a great outcome for those who had suffered daily
for decades. In some rarer cases, clients had to use not only
Muscle-Balance Therapy but a number of other approaches to
get good results. If your situation happens to require “the
kitchen sink,” you’ll find it in this book.
And don’t worry—what you’ll discover in the following
pages will pass your “commonsense” test with flying colors. As
you read, you’ll find yourself nodding along and telling

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Preface
viii

yourself, “Yes, this makes sense.” But let me warn you in
advance: Your doctor, chiropractor, massage therapist, or
physical therapist may not be familiar with these principles.
We’ll get into why that’s the case in later chapters.
So that’s my story of how I accidentally and reluctantly
became a widely followed expert on using nonmedical
approaches to eliminate stubborn, recurring back pain, and
how I came to develop and popularize Muscle-Balance
Therapy.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering what happened to Maria
and me: She felt terribly guilty for the pain I suffered because
of all that running. It certainly wasn’t her fault, but she still
took care of me during the weeks that followed my grocery-
store collapse. In the end, I guess I needn’t have worried
about it, as we continued to date each other and ultimately
got married. Today, we have eight children in our happy
family.
But enough about me. Let’s get started on getting rid of
your back pain so you, too, can live a pain-free life.